As you could well imagine, I really haven't had time to write much blog material of late. So I'm showcasing one of my drawings. Its a Southern Ground Hornbill. Seriously if you like it the original is for sale (price negotiable). The proceeds will help me and my family get to the UK next year for SVP Bristol.
4 comments:
I'm experiencing the economic difficulties in devoting life to a scientific career in Italy...but I know that's quite not easy elsewhere.
As young as I am, but full of (young) pride, I thought I could afford the expensive bills for ticket train, hotel and things like that for 2 days, but in the end I had to renounce to a trip for a conference in Rome on the past year (I had a paper to discuss there...)
'Twas a sad story... :-\
Your drawings are beautiful (I can't forget the Siderops pulling the theropod Cryolophosaurus underwater!). I can't buy it (right now...sorry) but what do you think 'bout getting a good-quality copy of your dinosaurs' drawings? I suppose this could help to expand the possible range of interested people.
> question:
From "there can be only one...Diprotodon"
"Price further notes that if he is correct in his interpretations then Diprotodon was spread virtually continent wide, in all sorts of habitats from woodland to semi-arid saltbush plains. In other words it was an ecological generalist. This poses a little bit of a problem for those who would deny the hand of Homo sapiens in the late Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions of Australia. Severe climatic change may well have caused loss of suitable habitat in the dry center but surely huge swaths of suitable habitat remained around the margins of the continent?"
(and I too confess that as a child I thought the nostrils were indeed eyes!! ;-) )
I have not a copy of Price article, but, as far I know, the role of Diprotodon in the interaction between Homo sapiens sapiens and local megafauna is still unresolved.
Australians autochtones have not a Cosmogonic tale about gods' world creation, but an analogue for Creation (world modeled after a "typos"); in archaic mythic Dreamtime they "remember" some kinda "edenic" place, a golden age in which dichotomy good-evil wasn't known at all, with plenty of wild animals all around (...to be eaten and hunted, of course)...
Giant snakes gave a good proof about mythological kakuru, the rainbow-snake...
and Diprotodon was thought to be a possible "exemplum" of geomythological archetypic mythic animal.
What about Homo sapiens sapiens diffusion during Pleistocene-recent times ? Did this expansion really result in a Diprotodon "overkill" [even if continental widespread a possible hunting/religious behaviour repeated for a long period could seriously damaged the species...was Diprotodon a possible migrating animal?] How did human and marsupials-megafaunal animals behaviours collide?
Any suggestion is welcomed for I'm working on a post to be published later on "Geomythology"...and bibliographies are welcomed as well! (I'm formally a historian of religions in need of scientific paleontological papers!)
Keep up the good work on your blog!
(Are you able to read and / or understand - at least - Italian or French?)
Refs:
- Eliade, M., Religions australiennes, p. 57
- Id, Histoire des croyances et des idées religieuses, vol. I, p. 44 et passim
[I didn't quote the exact edition; sorry, got no time now to check it!]
Leonardo
Post Scriptum:
sinceres felicitations et meilleur voeux pour Anwen!
If you're looking to pull some extra income, have you considered monetizing your blog (such as putting up Adsense ads)?
leo,
Sadly, there is not much palaeontological/archaeological evidence for human Diprotodon interaction, but that is probably more to do with the overall quality of the record from the Pleistocene of Australia than anything else. The two species probably did overlap in time, if briefly and one site (Lancefield maybe) there are stone tools and Diprotodon bones intermixed - but thats about it. It is just hard for me to accept that a creature that could range from cool southern woodlands and grasslands to harsh semi-arid shrubland would be wiped out by habitat loss.
What a beautiful drawing! Sheesh--I need to learn how to draw birds better.
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